The unexpected NBA Development That Might Have Cost the Boston Celtics Jaylen Brown

Brad Stevens summed up his rationale for trading Jaylen Brown pretty simply.

“The path looked a little bit more challenging with 70% of our cap and such a high percentage of our usage tied into two players,” he said on Monday evening. Later, he hinted at a line where keeping Brown was feasible.

“We may not be sitting here if there was a rule in the CBA that said the guys that you drafted that you sign to 35% supermaxes count as 25% cap,” he said. “That would allow you to build out towards the aprons with a lot more flexibility. But the reality is that those are hard to build … 47% of the cap is what those two guys were when we won it all. And that's just going up and up and that’s tough.”

Essentially, the money outweighed the production for the Boston Celtics. If Brown counting for 25% meant keeping him, then his usage, relative to how much money he makes, would be more in line with what the Celtics are looking for.

One problem for the Celtics is that what was supposed to be an era of unprecedented growth for the NBA salary cap hasn’t materialized. The new TV and streaming rights deal was supposed to bring in $77 billion over 11 years. That, plus other fresh revenue streams, was supposed to usher in such an influx of money, that the new collective bargaining agreement implemented a “cap smoothing” system where increases to the cap couldn't exceed 10%.

The goal was to avoid one major spike like the league saw in 2016, which allowed the Golden State Warriors to sign Kevin Durant.

But that hasn’t materialized. On Bluesky, the account “Hoop Informatics” posted a chart comparing the 10% projections to this year’s actual increase and the projected increases moving forward.

Salary Cap | ‪@hoopinformatics.bsky.social‬

Right away, we can see that this year’s cap is $6 million less than expected. A part of the problem is the slow death of regional sports networks, which aren’t able to come up with payments to teams and the league. That, and who know how many other factors, are conspiring to keep the actual cap increases below the anticipated 10%. That's shrinking the expected cap space, and making supermax contracts like Brown’s signed at the beginning of the CBA a bigger albatross than expected.

As I detailed yesterday, the Celtics are currently slightly over the tax line, which they hope to avoid. If the cap had come in at the expected 10% increase, Boston would be about $5 million under the tax and $14 million away from the first apron hard cap triggered by the Mitchell Robinson signing.

If they’d kept Brown, they could still be under the tax this year if the cap had increased as expected. Next season, they’d be sitting at 66% of the cap, which is still high, but a bit more manageable with a $15 million difference between what was originally expected and what the new reality is. They would have accounted for 71.5% of the cap under the current cap projections.

When cap smoothing was first introduced, the expectation was that the salary cap would increase at a rate that outpaced player raises. That has not been the case. Now teams are stuck with a reality that these supermax contracts are eating up bigger and bigger chunks of the available money.

Brown might still have been traded if the 10% projection came to pass. If everything went down the way it did, though, the Celtics would have more of a path to adding someone significant with their $27.7 million traded player exception. Staying $5 million under the tax line, waiving Dalano Banton, and trading Sam Hauser into someone’s exception would have given them $18.6 million to pursue a trade while still staying under the tax line.

It’s important to note that player salaries are based on a percentage of the cap, but only in the first season they are in effect. Jaylen Brown signed his extension in July 2023, but it took effect in 2024. He received 35% of the cap in that season, which was a little more than $49 million. From there, the player receives raises based on that initial salary, not based on the salary cap. So Brown and Tatum are due 8% raises every season off their previous year’s salary.

Teams have formulas that drive how they make decisions. Brown’s usage rate plus production no longer equals, in Boston’s eyes, the $57 million he’s due. The new cap reality is part of that equation falling out of whack. Maybe Brown would have been traded either way, but he’s not the only player who is going to be affected.

Future contracts, including Payton Pritchard’s extension, for example, will be driven downward. We have to wonder how Derrick White’s contract looks to them this season if he doesn’t fully bounce back from last year’s down offensive season. On the flip side, what kind of pressures will this lower-than-expected cap put on other teams, and which unexpected players will shake loose?

The CBA is already changing things a great deal, and lottery reform is adding a new element to the immediate future. This change in the cap is a negative for the NBA, and it’s adding to a lot of the chaos and uncertainty in the league.

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